The Ultimatum
by Feethefabulous
Summary: One quiet summer day, Jane and Lisbon get together and force each other to throw away old memories and start anew. Rated T for language.


**Written for the Jello-forever January challenge. Hope you enjoy.**

"Are you ready?" Patrick asked Teresa as they opened the trunk of his little blue car.

"Sure, why wouldn't I be?" she said, giving him a cocky grin. "We've planned this for a while, anyways, and today's the only day when I have enough free time to do it properly."

It was a warm day in the middle of Spring. Most of California was already hot and dry, but where they were, the weather was more tolerable, especially along the more secluded parts of the river. Harmless insects were making rounds in the warm sunshine, flitting lazily between small patches of sunshine. Patrick turned away from Lisbon and grinned quietly to himself. Though she didn't yet know it, he'd taken the time to pack a picnic lunch for the two of them. It was the perfect day for one, and would beat the alternative of going to one of the roadside hotdog stands a few minutes away.

"You coming, Jane?" Lisbon had picked up her box and was now a distance away, heading to the river. Quickly, he snapped out of his stupor and picked up the picnic basket, along with his own box of things. Teresa appeared to have no problem with her load, despite the amount of mementos tucked into it. His own small box, however, felt surprisingly weighted. Trying to ignore the feeling, he ran to catch up with her, and together they walked down a small footpath, heading for the bridge.

Lisbon had been the one to suggest this place, as well as the idea. She'd tried to keep things casual and friendly when she'd asked him to join her several weeks ago.

"Just bring a few things, some symbolic stuff from your past or some memories that you might want to get rid of. It's been hard these past few weeks, I've got to admit. Maybe this will give us a bit of release without having to visit the in-house crack doctor."

Patrick had quietly bitten his lip and put on a false pleading face, telling her things like _But it'll be a sunny Saturday, Don't you have better things to do_, and as a last resort, _Maybe I don't feel like it_. He wasn't about to own up the truth-that if they'd do something so intimate together, share memories of the past, they were just as likely to share hopes and dreams for the future.

Teresa knew this, but she was feebly attempting to hide it behind a mask of simple friendship. He knew this, but he wasn't about to risk what he had with her already. Nor could he afford to let anyone know just how much he cared about her.

That was why, in the end, he'd agreed and packed the picnic lunch. It was a beautiful day, and he had randomly decided to throw away symbolic memories with a friend. Just a friend. And then hopefully, if he played his cards right, he could trick himself into believing that Teresa was a mere courtesy, nothing that could possibly be bothered with if someone ever wanted to hit close to his heart.

"What's that?" quipped Lisbon, pointing to the basket. Jane snapped out of his thoughts and quickly put on a generous, slightly sleazy smile. "Thought we might be hungry afterwards."

"Oh," she replied, raising her eyebrows in surprise. "Great idea, I'd forgotten about that." She turned back, walking quietly alongside him, looking careless as far as the world was concerned. Her eyes were still whispering, though; honest, quiet eyes that seemed to reveal the vulnerable woman behind them. Worse still, they radiated hope.

Now he knew that he shouldn't have taken up her offer. Hurting her feelings through a blatant refusal would still have been safer than risking himself at a time like this. Nice day as it was, nobody else seemed to be walking on the same path. Apparently, they were the only two people in sight.

"There's the bridge," Lisbon said, as they walked out from beneath the cover of the forest. The water was sparkling slightly in the sun, running smoothly.

They walked across the wooden planks and dumped their boxes down next to them. Lisbon stretched, her shirt riding up slightly over her stomach. Suddenly frowning, she shrugged off her thin jacket and folded it up in a messy bunch next to her. "Want to take off your jacket? It's getting hot."

"No, I'm fine. Can we get on with it?" Patrick replied, letting his slight irritation show through. He wasn't just hot; he was burning, especially because of that unexpected glimpse of skin he'd gotten. If he removed his jacket, though, then it would appear far too casual, and casual wasn't what he was playing for right now. Stiffly sitting down on the wooden planks, he moved their things so that there was some distance between the two of them.

Lisbon plunked herself down across from their boxes, looked into his eyes for a second. Patrick thought he saw a hint of hurt, and immediately turned redder. She really was making this hard for him-her vulnerability was showing clearly. If he didn't do something about this situation soon, he knew that his emotions would betray him, and then all those suppressed feelings would rise up to the well of his throat and render him speechless, and before he knew it a confession would come choking out.

Quickly, Patrick swallowed all this back down and opened the flaps of his box. Lisbon soon recovered and did so too. From his box, Patrick produced an old stuffed Tiger, a small black grease spot staining its purple flannel stomach.

Lisbon frowned. "A toy?"

"Memories of high school years. Well, at least of the years that I should have been going to high school." Patrick turned the animal over, inspecting its worn tail. "I showed it to my daughter once, she didn't like it much. Guess Daddy didn't have an interesting enough story to tell." The bitterness came back, and Patrick lost himself temporarily to Teresa's presence, struggling with the memories. When was he ever going to let go and get on with his life?

Faintly he heard something splash in the water behind him, and then the toy was yanked out of his hands and thrown off in the same direction. Patrick forced himself back to the present and turned around. Floating down with the current was a mangled black and red lace bra, shortly followed by the limp purple tiger. Unable to say anything, Patrick gaped as the link to his memories of teenage life and his daughter were washed away down the river.

"I had to help you a bit," Lisbon said apologetically. "Otherwise you'd be holding that dirty thing and sitting here forever."

Patrick recovered enough to manage a reply. "Won't all these things pollute the river?" In actuality, he couldn't care less about the river. What he was more concerned about was the fact that the rest of the things in his box, great or small, would soon be suffering the same fate as the stuffed toy, and now that he'd actually seen what could happen, he suddenly didn't want to let go.

Lisbon looked at him as though there were something wrong. "It's only a few items, and someone will pick them up by the banks eventually." She shrugged, casting her eyes down to the side. "Anyways, some other slut can have that bra."

"You slept around?" For some reason, he found it hard to believe. Either that, or he was convincing himself not to believe it.

"A few times in high school, with guys who I thought loved me. Funny what you do when you're a kid." She settled herself back and pushed her hair behind her ears. So she'd been hurt before, then. This further reinforced the hunch that she wasn't the kind of woman who'd go along with a teenage infatuation. Patrick took this as a sort of reassurance-the emotions in her eyes were all a mistake, and he was just thinking too much, as a man in love tended to do. Oh, shit.

"So, what do you want to deal with next?"

Patrick peeked into his box, although he already knew how many items he had left. "I've got two. You?"

"Only two? There must be around ten in here." Lisbon frowned. "Tell you what, I'll do all of mine, then you can do yours, and then we can eat lunch. I'm getting hungry.

Without hesitation, she proceeded to throw out an old CD, some jewelry (probably from other past boyfriends), some pieces of paper, and an untouched bottle of wine with a label reading '_Love, Dad.'_ Then she pulled a tiny object from the box and tossed it into the river. It glinted in the sun as it fell, but quickly got swept under and was lost in the shimmering water.

Instinct kicked in, and Patrick whirled towards her. "What was that?"

"Another memory," Lisbon shrugged.

"My eyesight doesn't fail me, Lisbon. Furthermore, you don't randomly throw away gold rings on one of these excursions." He turned to look her in the eye, his mind automatically scrutinizing her every move. Little by little her face told the story, and it was all Patrick could do to hold back his emotions as he started to piece together the truth.

"Bosco gave it to you, some sort of gift for your first promotion. You didn't want to take it, but he made you, and so you've kept it, all this while. And I bet…"-Patrick could hardly hide his agitation- "that since then, even after Sam's been gone for so long, you still toy with the idea that he cared for you, and the guilt that went along with thinking that."

A sinking feeling had already started in Patrick's stomach. So she had never really gotten over Sam Bosco. She still thought about him; the only way she'd ever get the man out of her head had been by throwing away her connection to him. And for that, she'd needed help-_His _help. All former thoughts of a brighter future vanished from his mind.

"Teresa, you might have gotten rid of it, but that guilt will follow you forever. It'll chase you, haunt you. There is nothing you can do to get rid of it."

"Oh, really?" Lisbon shot back, her voice rising to a shout. "Only because that's how _you _make it out to be, Jane. Only because you _want _that guilt to follow you. Shit, that's the reason I invited you out here, to help you get over that guilt. People can get back up and move on. Why can't you?"

Patrick closed his eyes and thought, about his daughter's and wife's deaths, about Red John, about all those mistakes he'd made in his past life. Then he thought about Lisbon. He was trapped again-trapped in his love and feelings for something that he wanted terribly but was near impossible to have. And now, he had to admit that her words were indeed right-he had to learn to get back up, to get over Teresa Lisbon and all the things that haunted him, and to move on.

Sighing quietly, he admitted to himself that he did want to be haunted; if he weren't, then he had absolutely nothing left. Inside his box were two things: a necklace, given to his wife on their first anniversary, and his daughter's pillowcase, neatly folded in the corner of the box. They'd meant a lot to him, but over time the sparkle of the jewels had faded, and the smell of his daughter's hair had faded, little by little, till there was no scent left but for that which memories incurred.

He turned his head, looking down into green eyes that showed concern and frustration and worry, all at the same time. And then he realized something: that although those feelings were not directed at him in the way he'd once hoped they were, they were still there, and they were real. Quietly, he picked up the two items and held them over the water, letting them slip from his fingers. They fell to the water and were lost, but with each passing second, he felt a sort of relief, the liberation of something caged inside him that had been trapped for so long. Until now.

"Earth to Jane."

A quiet hand brushed against his, bringing him back to reality. It was ever so slight, but somehow that single movement spurred a chain-reaction of thought inside his head. Why…

"Teresa," he said carelessly, turning to look at her, "What exactly was the purpose in bringing me out here …? You could have brought Van Pelt or Cho."

She bit her lip, stared steadily at an invisible object somewhere far away. "Common interests," she supplied quickly. "I didn't think I'd be able to deal with these things all by myself. And to be honest, neither would you."

Patrick glanced down at her, but all she offered was an easy grin, not dissimilar to the one he'd given her half an hour ago. The patches of sunlight alternately illuminated and shadowed her features, preventing Patrick from accurately catching her expression. There was something else hidden behind that smirk…smugness, a few residual memories, possibly delight? He rolled his eyes, turning away from her to allow himself a quiet smile. He still didn't know what was going on in the workings of Teresa Lisbon's mind. Now that they'd both started anew, however, he'd have plenty of time to find out.


End file.
